A hatchment is a funeral demonstration of the lifetime "achievement" of the arms (shield, helmet, crest, supporters) and any other honours displayed on a black lozenge-shaped frame which used to be suspended against the wall of a deceased person's house. It was usually placed over the entrance at the level of the second floor, and remained for from six to twelve months, after which it was removed to the parish church. The practice developed in the early 17th century from the custom of carrying an heraldic shield before the coffin of the deceased, then leaving it for display in the church. In medieval times, helmets and shields were sometimes deposited in churches.
At the universities of Oxford and Cambridge it was usual to hang the hatchment of a deceased head of a house over the entrance to his lodge or residence.
Hatchments have now largely fallen into disuse, but many hatchments from former times remain in parish churches throughout England.
Colours and military or naval emblems are sometimes placed behind the arms of military or naval officers. In Scottish hatchments it is not unusual to place the arms of the father and mother of the deceased in the two lateral angles of the lozenge, and sometimes there are 4, 8 or 16 genealogical escutcheons ranged along the margin.
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In the Netherlands hatchments (in Dutch, rouwbord, literally meaning "mourning shield") with the word "OBIIT" (Latin:"deceased") and the date of death were hung over the door of the deceased's house and later on the wall of the church where he was buried. In the 17th century the hatchments were sober black lozenge-shaped frames with the coat of arms. In the 18th century both the frames and the heraldry got more and more elaborate. Symbols of death like batwings, skulls, hour-glasses and crying angels with torches were added and the names of the 8, 16 or even 32 armigerous forebearers (sometimes an invention, there were a lot of "nouveaux riches") and their genealogical escutcheons were displayed. The British tradition of differentiating between the hatchments of bachelors, widowers and others is unknown in the Low Countries. The arms of a widow are sometimes surrounded by a cordelière (knotted cord) and the arms of women are often, but not always, shaped like a lozenge. There were no Kings of Arms to rule and regulate these traditions.
In 1795 the Dutch republic, recently conquered by revolutionary France, issued a decree that banned all heraldic shields. Thousands of hatchments were chopped to pieces and burned. In the 19th. century the hatchments were almost forgotten and only a few noble families kept the tradition alive.
In Flanders, the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church have kept the tradition of putting up hatchments alive to this day. Noble families have continued to put up hatchments in churches.
Unlike the British hatchments the Dutch and Belgian examples are often inscribed with dates of birth and death, often the Latin words "obit", "nascent" and "svea" are used to give the dates of death and birth and the age of the deceased. The name and titles are sometimes added along with the arms of various ancestors.
Sometimes the coats of arms of man and woman are shown on a hatchment.
For a bachelor the hatchment bears his arms (shield, crest, and other appendages) on a black lozenge. For a single woman, her arms are represented upon a lozenge, bordered with knotted ribbons, also on a black lozenge. If the hatchment be for a married man, with a surviving wife, his arms upon a shield impale those of his wife; or if she be an heraldic heiress they are placed upon an escutcheon of pretence, and crest and other appendages are added. The dexter half of the background is black (the husband being dead), the sinister half of the background is white (his wife still being alive).
For a wife whose husband is alive the same arrangement is used, but the sinister background is black (for the wife) and the dexter background is white (for the surviving husband). For a widower the same is used as for a married man, but the whole ground is black (both spouses being dead); for a widow the husband's arms are given with her own, but upon a lozenge, with ribbons, without crest or appendages, and the whole ground is black. When there have been two wives or two husbands the ground may be divided in a number of different ways. Sometimes the shield is divided into three parts per pale, with the husband's arms in the middle section and the arms of each of his wives to each side of him. Sometimes the husband's arms remain in the dexter half and the two wives have their arms in the sinister half, divided per fess, each wife having one quarter of the whole shield, one half of the sinister half.
Only about fifty hatchments still exist in Scotland, unlike the riches to be found in England and the Netherlands (where there may well be more Scots hatchments surviving than in Scotland). Part of this is undoubtedly due to the Church of Scotland in the mid 17th century. In 1643 The General Assembly passed an Act in 1643 which prohibited 'Honours of Arms or any such like monuments'. A surviving document of Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire records that "Att Grange, 19th December, 1649... the presbytry finding some pinselis in memorie of the dead hinging in the kirk, presentlie caused them to be pulled doun in face of presbytry, and the minister rebuiked for suffering to hing ther so long."
Scots hatchments do not follow in the sparse pattern that modern writers lay out for hatchments and funeral heraldry – being sometimes quite highly decorated with the coats of antecedents and with tears, skulls (mort heads), mantles.
A full story, not only of hatchments but of funeral heraldry in general, is told by Charles J Burnett, Dingwall Pursuivant, in the article "Funeral heraldry in Scotland with particular reference to hatchments" in The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 116 (1986), pp 473–559 (available as a pdf from the Society).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.